


the red scarf of fate

by hellfriend



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bucky Barnes-centric, Gen, POV Bucky Barnes, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Trans Steve Rogers, War Veteran Bucky Barnes, War Veteran Sam Wilson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-10
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-21 03:57:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14276409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellfriend/pseuds/hellfriend
Summary: Meeting Natasha's friend for lunch becomes so much more when Bucky recognizes a familiar face.





	the red scarf of fate

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in the autumn of 2015 during a long stretch of time without internet access. It was meant to be a series but I never could find the motivation to write more than a few lines of the second installment, and the works that had come before it were tragically lost when I deleted their files without going through them beforehand. Finally convinced me to give my wips more individualized names so a mistake like that would never happen again. 
> 
> Fr some reason the working title of this was 'Summer' which i think is a bit strange bc it takes place in november but ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ 
> 
> I'm posting this without any (new) edits, so beware my wordiness and run-on sentences, but all-in-all I'm rather pleased with this thing. 
> 
> So without further ado...........
> 
> .

There were some things to be said about seeing your best friend, whose whereabouts and status were unknown for the past twelve years, cupping his face with a bruised-knuckle hand to conceal a bleeding nose in the back corner of a diner while the man across from you just rolled his eyes like it was a common occurrence and the woman beside you watched with well-concealed amusement. Yes, there were many things to be said, but all Barnes could manage was a choked up, “Stevie?” that turned the woman’s amused eye on him and halted the man’s speech about self-preservation right in its tracks and grabbed the attention of the short and scrawny absolute _punk_ of a blond standing by the table with blood leaking between the cracks of his slender tattooed fingers.

A hush fell over the table, and if Barnes were looking at the other occupants, he would have found a cautious flickering between him and the blond coming from the man sitting across from him and a quirk of one perfect red brow from the woman beside him. But his gaze was elsewhere, sweeping over the familiar stance his best friend used to do when he was preparing for a fight –- _Hey, I said leave her alone!, Give him back his glasses!, Why don’t you pick on someone your own size!_ –- and Barnes inhaled sharply.

He tried again with a weak, “Stevie Rogers?” and watched the blond blink several times, long eyelashes fluttering and fuck, it was so familiar. Barnes swallowed dryly. “I’m–”

“Bucky Barnes,” the blond said with a surprisingly deep voice, cutting off the start of what was going to be an apology: _Sorry, I thought you were my long-lost childhood best friend._ “My god, you’re Bucky Barnes.”

The name, it was enough to shock him into laughter-- a sudden, hysterical-sounding thing that bubbled out of his mouth and into the open. Barnes had to clap a hand over his mouth to keep it from getting loud and embarrassing, to keep it from all spilling out; he was certain if it had continued for any longer than the brief second that took him by surprise, it would have ended with him laugh-sobbing and no one wanted to watch a post-traumatic-stress-riddled war vet finally have his very public breakdown. He was still grinning like a loon from behind his hand, though, looking at the blond with some kind of expression on his face that was making the man sitting across from him -- Sam, Barnes’ short-circuiting mind supplied -- send him concerned looks.

The blond must have been stuck in the same kind of moment as Barnes because, a moment of stunned staring later, Sam stood and started to lead him away to the restroom with a gentle hand on the blond’s lower back. “Let’s go look at your nose, see if you broke anything,” Sam said, and the blond let himself be steered in that direction but not without a quick glance over his shoulder at Barnes, blue eyes flashing just before the two of them disappeared around a corner.

It took another minute for Barnes to feel like he wasn’t about to start freaking out, like _really_ freak out. Inside, he was all over the place -- bouncing between shock and confusion to disbelief to a bone-deep _knowing_ that that was absolutely _Stevie fucking Rogers_ , had to be, before it looped back to the start. And then, just as a new emotion was entered into the mix, one alongside the knowing that that was his Stevie Rogers and not a hopeful misconception, one that made him want to storm into the restroom and demand answers, the woman sitting beside him cleared her throat.

“So, James,” she said, and her lips were curved into her signature smirk, “who was that?”

Barnes released a shaky breath, letting the bulk of his anger go with it. Natasha raised a brow, more concerned than amused. “I’ve never seen you get worked up like that.”

He laughed and it didn’t sound right to his ears. “Yeah, well.” He crammed his hand into the pocket of his jeans, grabbing hold of his keys and squeezing until the bite of metal against his palm helped loosen some of the tightness in his chest.

“Before my time?” Natasha guessed and Barnes barked an unamused laugh.

“A bit, yeah.”

She pursed her lips then nodded slowly, understandingly, putting two and two together because she knew a little about James’ childhood friend who one day just up and vanished.

Natasha regarded him carefully and Barnes expertly ignored it, staring ahead at the opposite side of the booth where Sam had been sitting. He continued to clutch at the keys in his pocket, the feel of metal grinding in his palm the only thing keeping him from getting wrapped up in his thoughts. There was so much going on in his head, a swirl of memories and half-formed ideas of what to say when Sam and the blond -- _Stevie_ returned. The only thing that remained constant was the overwhelming urge to _run_ and the combating urge to stay, to catch up, to exchange contact information and make plans to see each other again because there was no way in hell he was going to let Stevie Rogers slip from his fingers again. Barnes wasn’t sure he would be able to take that a second time.

When they got back to the table, Sam slid into the far end of the booth so he was sitting across from Natasha and the blond plunked himself down right in front of Barnes. Now that his face was no longer covered by a hand and blood, though there was a bit of bruising, the resemblance between him and the Stevie Rogers Barnes grew up with was uncanny. Sure, the person sitting across from him had a stronger jaw, thicker brows, a more mature and masculine face overall; but the shape of his lips was familiar, the slight crook to his nose, and those eyes, as blue as Barnes remembered. The shred of doubt that had been kicking around in his brain dissipated instantly. This was Stevie Rogers.

The urge to run tickled at him again but Barnes pushed it down, used the energy that would have gone toward scrambling out of the booth and booking it out of the diner to jiggle his knee. He could feel Natasha’s eyes on him, an expectant sort of stare. “Well,” he said, and it took everything in him to let go of the death-grip on his keys and pull his hand from his pocket. Once it was free, though, he had no idea what to do with it.

Stevie nodded his head solemnly. “Yeah.” His voice was a croak. He cleared his throat and shook his head, gold-blond hair flopping in his face. He pushed it back in the way that he had done when he was younger: fingertips grazing over his forehead, moving hair to the side. If it was the length it had been when they were kids, before Bucky had cut it short at Stevie’s request, the trail would have continued until his hair was tucked neatly behind his left ear, his good ear. But seeing it, seeing him move his hair like that, helped solidify the fact that this was _Stevie Rogers_ in Barnes’ head.

“God, this is surreal,” Stevie said with a quiet huff of laughter. “Bucky Barnes. Wow. I really don’t know -- what to say?” He did that thing again, fingertips pushing hair off his forehead and to the side, and a wide smile broke out on his face, big enough to make the corners of his eyes crinkle with it and _fuck, he’s sunshine. He’s still fucking sunshine._ “I’ve m-- It’s, wow. God, it’s been so long.”

“Yeah,” and now Barnes’ voice was rough. “Twelve years.”

“Thirteen,” Stevie corrected quickly. Before Barnes could reflect on that, the blond was already moving on. “I looked for you, you know, on facebook and myspace. Everything. Never could find you.”

“Me, too. But I didn’t know, uh, what name to type in.”

Stevie sat up a little straighter, puffed up his narrow chest. “Steven Grant Rogers,” he said, a proud little smile playing at his lips. “I don’t have any personal accounts, though.”

“Me either. Seems like--” Barnes glanced down at the table, at where his hand was holding the edge of it in a white-knuckle grip. He wet his lips and sighed, uncurling his fist and flicking his eyes back up. “It’s a bit too much.”

He watched Stevie -- Steve? -- break into a soft smile. “Yeah,” he breathed out and Barnes found himself returning that soft smile with one of his own.

 

Bucky ended up leaving the diner early. It wasn’t because the overwhelming urge to flee resurfaced after he relaxed enough to actually talk to Steve, to catch up -- he didn’t learn what made Steve and his ma skip town all those years ago, but he did learn that Steve went to art school like he wanted; that he tattoos for a living, and that he enjoys it, but what he really wants to try now is comics; that he switches between living with his boyfriend Sam and living in his studio apartment that was supposed to be more studio than living apartment; that he’s not the same punk he was thirteen years ago but he’s still a damn punk and that Bucky is the only one that gets away with calling him Stevie. No, the reason he left early was because a server ended up dropping a tub of ceramic plates close to their cozy booth in the corner and the sound of rattling dishware had him ducking under the table with his flesh hand keeping Natasha’s head down and the one made of metal and covered with a leather glove reaching for a gun he no longer had.

It took too many minutes of Natasha’s voice telling him his name, the date, and location to get him to believe her, even longer to get his breathing into a normal pattern. When Barnes finally managed to crawl back into his seat, he stared at the table because he could never stand pitying looks -- and hell if he was going to stand seeing it coming from his long-lost best friend -- and tried to apologize. Sam wouldn’t have it.

He said, “Look, man, I’ve been there,” and when Barnes managed to lift his gaze away from the greasy Formica tabletop, he saw that Sam’s smile was just a little tight, that he was holding his shoulders differently, tensely, like he was fighting his body’s instinct to move to safety. Barnes recognized the posture, could feel his own shoulders holding it. Something in him relaxed slightly, but he still felt guilty when, not even five minutes later, he stood to leave because every moderately loud noise kept making him flinch and the lights overhead were suddenly too bright and his flesh-and-bone hand wouldn’t stop trembling and he was so _tired._

He stood and Natasha kissed his cheek, told him to call her when he got home, and Sam gave him a slight wave and Steve offered to walk him out, except Steve grabbed his coat and Sam kissed the corner of Steve’s mouth like he wasn’t going to come back to the table.

“Hey, so what happened back there--” Barnes started when they were out of earshot of the table. Steve waved him off.

“Don’t worry about it, Buck,” and the nickname of his nickname had his heart hurting for some reason. Steve worried at his bottom lip and said, “You don’t hafta explain it to me.”

Steve pushed open the door of the diner with a cheery ring of a bell overhead and the wind rushed in at them, cold and biting November weather that made the trees rattle and painted the sky grey. They stood in front of the diner for a long moment, quiet as the wind stirred leaves up from the ground into swirls of orange and brown, and Steve pulled a ratty red scarf from one of his bulging coat pockets; it was knitted, clunky and lopsided, handmade by someone who didn’t know their way around a pair of needles very well, and Bucky felt all the air leave his lungs at the sight of it.

“You kept it,” he whispered and he was sure the wind pulled his words away, but Steve smiled his sunshine smile, blinding, and nodded.

“’Course I did, Buck,” Steve said, wrapping it around his neck. He continued on, nonchalant as could be, “I still have that hat you made me, too, but the bobble fell off last year. Oh, and the mittens. They don’t fit my hands any--mmf!”

Bucky couldn’t help it, not when Stevie was telling him he kept all those knitted atrocities Bucky had made for him just two months before the Rogerses disappeared. He hugged him, hard, using his good arm to hold Steve against his chest and keeping the metal one away, careful not to touch Steve with it. And then Steve was slipping his skinny arms around Bucky’s middle, pushing into the hug, his cold nose pressing against Bucky’s neck and his warm breath ghosting over Bucky’s skin, and there were words: “Oh, god, Bucky, I-- It’s been _so long._ Christ, I saw you on _the news_ and, god, Bucky, I thought you were--” and Steve started trembling, shaking like a leaf in the November wind, and Bucky was certain if he pulled away now, he would have seen Stevie’s face screwed up and blotched red. He wouldn’t do that, though: Stevie Rogers didn’t like people to see him cry; and maybe Bucky needed to just hold him for a moment longer, just needed to feel that Stevie was here, breathing, not in any of the situations Barnes had dreamed up with all those years of nothing but memories and worry to keep him going.

When they parted -- actually parted because the first time they went to break away, Steve held onto Bucky’s hips with both hands and Bucky had his hand curled around Steve’s upper arm, holding him close, just a breath away -- it was to the promise to catch up for real. “And not just on my lunch break,” Steve said with a laugh and Bucky squeezed his shoulder, said, “It was real nice seeing you, Stevie,” and then Steve was gone and Bucky was walking home with his hands in his pockets and a good feeling in his heart.

\--


End file.
